I will describe Maxwell's demon, the Smoluchowski ratchet and pawl, the Szilard engine that relates information and heat, and some work of Brillouin, Landauer, Bennett and others on these topics. These topics lie at the intersection of thermodynamics and information and computer science, and I will aim to bring out this connection. On the biology side, it has been suggested that the molecular motors dynein and kinesin can be modeled as flashing ratchets.
Prerequisites: Not strictly necessary, but it will help to know a little about random variables, Shannon entropy, and the ideal gas law.
